August 2024:
Notebooks and Nancy Drew

Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.

—Louis L’Amour

Dear friends,

In a bookshelf facing my writing desk is a row of Nancy Drew books. These are the very ones that I collected eagerly as a kid, mostly from rummage and library book sales.

Though I’ve re-read one or two of them since then, my interest in them is largely sentimental. They take me back to that shelf of yellow spines in the school library and the delicious dilemma of deciding which one to read next. They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but of course my friends and I did that with Nancy Drew. I loved how each cover piqued my curiosity about the characters and setting, making me wonder what the Ringmaster’s Secret was and how exactly Nancy would solve the Hidden Window Mystery (because you always knew she would solve it. In the Nancy Drew Universe, there was no other possibility.)

Late last year, when a close friend saw the cover of A Golden Life, she mentioned that the woman in the car reminded her somewhat of Nancy Drew. That made me smile. A Golden Life isn’t a mystery in the classic sense, but there are secrets to unravel. There are colorful locations (Hollywood and Napa), and there is a quest. Like Nancy, the character of Frances is a competent and appealing young woman (though unlike Nancy, she’s far more realistically human, with complex depths and personal baggage).

But still, I love the comparison. And it’s my hope that readers of A Golden Life will be like ten-year-old me with The Ringmaster’s Secret, turning pages late into the night, unable to put it down. There’s no better kind of reading experience, is there?

Wishing you a lovely and intrigue-filled August,

Ginny

P.S. If you’re a fan of Nancy Drew, I highly recommend the book Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak. It's a fascinating biography of the character and her authors.

Book Update: One month to publication!

In the late summer of 2018, I found myself tantalized by a new idea: I could write a novel about a secretary and her boss on a road trip. In early 2019, I realized that it was a story set in 1930s Hollywood. And in 2019-2020, I wrote and polished the first draft of A Golden Life.

Needless to say, I’ve been living quietly with this story for a long time. It doesn’t seem real that it’s almost time for it to get out in the world and mingle … but it is!

The official launch will be September 26 at Books Inc. in Palo Alto. If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, I'd love to see you there!

The writing life:

Notebooks are not just for words

On my office bookshelf (and in a large box in my bedroom) are my collection of composition books. Since about 2003, I’ve used them for journaling, brainstorming, freewriting scenes, and just generally playing around on the page. To me, they’re the perfect size: big enough to hold a decent amount, small enough to fit into a large purse if needed. They don’t have annoying wire spines that poke me, and they lie perfectly flat, which makes writing easier.

I generally write my novel drafts directly on the computer, but I use these notebooks to feel my initial way into a story. Often, I’ll take a book of creative writing prompts, choose one, and just scribble, seeing what comes out. It’s great because it's low-stakes fun—something about writing by hand feels intrinsically imperfect, thus taking the pressure off— but it’s often the very process by which story ideas first appear to me.

As I get further into drafting a novel, these notebooks are also where I scribble questions and ideas. I can look back at old notebooks and literally see myself, in writing, working through plot possibilities (“What if X, Y, or Z happens?") It’s a great safe space for figuring it all out, novel-wise.

Most of the notebooks have a picture glued on the cover. This began as a way for me to use the various greeting cards I had saved over the years. It also makes it easy to keep the notebooks straight in my mind (“That’s in the English cottage book.”).

About six years ago, I started trying something new: printing out images from my personal Pinterest boards, and gluing them on the covers and throughout the pages.

Outside cover...

... and inside cover

The images I choose are all meaningful to me. Maybe they look like one of the characters I’m getting to know, or they look like a setting I’m writing about. Sometimes they are just an image from the historical era in which the story takes place. Sometimes they evoke a mood that I sense is going to be part of a future story. It’s like a notebook/inspiration board hybrid. I love scribbling and turning the page and coming upon one of them, randomly placed.

Cutting and gluing the images—and, sometimes, prettying up the inside covers with scrapbook paper—is also just plain fun. It taps into my creative and crafty side, making me feel like a kindergartener again. Most of all, it helps keep the playfulness in writing. In those early days of an idea, when you’re freewriting and scribbling, it should feel like play (the tearing-your-hair-out over finding exactly the right word comes much later).

In the garden: Shady doings

Like most of the U.S., we've had some pretty intense heat here this summer, which has led to the demise of a few of my flowers. Overall, though, the garden is still looking healthy. I’m grateful for the big shade trees in the yard behind us; they are a most effective heat shield for almost everything in that part of the yard. (They are also a playground for the local squirrels, who seem to enjoy flexing their little squirrel muscles and gloating at my dog as he whines at them from the ground below.)

It's nice having a place dedicated to shade plants. Every spring, I go to town planting coleus. I’ve been known to hit four different nurseries trying to find the most vibrant shades; it’s an obsession. I’m a fan of fuschia, too, with its bright colors. (The adorable sign was a gift from my parents a few years back.)

There's a gnome somewhere in that jungle

I've got a few pots of zinnias, too. Pots are nice because I can move them back into the shade on the hot days. I love these flowers and their bright circus colors.

I'm hoping next month to have bachelors' buttons to show you ... I planted them several weeks ago, and they're just starting to bloom. Fingers crossed that they end up happy in the place where I've put them!